It seems that I’ve managed to neglect blogging any of the recent awards announcements. This must be remedied!

1. At Swancon (wow, that was a while ago now!) the Ditmar (national) and Tin Duck (Western Australian) speculative fiction awards were announced. Congratulations to everyone who was on the shortlists and especially to the winners of each category!

FableCroft did have a few shortlistings, and although the competition was tough and we didn’t take home any Ditmars for FableCroft, it was great to be on the ballot in the following categories:

Best Collected Work – Worlds Next Door

Best Professional Artwork- cover of Australis Imaginarium by Shaun Tan

Best Fan Writer – Tehani Wessely

Best Achievement – Snapshot 2010 (which DID win! Well done to the Snapshot team, spearheaded by Kathryn Linge).

Full ballot and winners can be found here. (Photo of the Snapshot team by Sandra/Wing Chung)

The Tin Ducks were also very good to us, with the following works on the ballot:

Best WA Professional Short Written Work – “Little Arkham” by Martin Livings (from Worlds Next Door)

Best WA Professional Production – Australis Imaginarium and Worlds Next Door

Best WA Fan Written Work - Tehani Wessely (and I was so delighted – and shocked! – to win this category and take home one of the beautiful trophies).

That was April! In May we saw the announcement of the Aurealis Awards in Sydney. I was a judge again in 2010 and decided to do a flying visit to Sydney for the awards. I’m really glad I did and it was a wonderful night. Congratulations not only to the nominees and winners but also to SpecFaction NSW, who took on a big job and did it well!

FableCroft had two stories in the Young Adult short story shortlist, “Inksucker” by Aidan Doyle and “Nine Times” by Kaia Landelius and Tansy Rayner Roberts (from Worlds Next Door). Sadly they missed out on the gong but when the winner is Margo Lanagan, it’s a good way to lose!

Full Aurealis shortlists and judges reports here. (Photo of the Fantasy Short Story judges, Tehani, Simon Petrie and Natalie Maddalena, by Cat Sparks)

There is one more Aussie awards batch yet to come, with the Chronos Awards (the Victorian equivalent of the Tin Ducks) in Melbourne early in June. Shall look forward to more great Australian works being celebrated there!